The episode opens with an anonymous voice gloating, "Three hundred pounds of pressure. Let the bassline getcha!" The camera swoops into an opulent casino (my bet: Mandalay Bay, since they have the boxing facility), and we see a boxing banner that reads, "Steele vs. Molina. Revenge in the Desert. November 9, 2002." Well, it beats "Two Old Geezers at Caesar's," but not by much. We see a sleek blonde in a floor-length dress being squired in by someone who's apparently recognized by the press, we see the cameras snapping in the ring, and we see someone whaling away in the ring. There's a boxing match going on; I suppose I could cover it by writing, "Jabs! Uppercuts! The ol' one-two! Overhand right!" but the truth is that I've always thought of boxing as a barbaric vehicle in which crooked men make a lot of money off fixed fights, and if I want to see two people pretending to have a fair match, I'll go with the infinitely more entertaining WWE. So I really can't recap the fight for you. I can, however, note that a small bald man is hauling ass across the casino floor, and I don't blame him; it looks like he's being pursued by Bel, Biv, or possible DeVoe, and their accompanying thug posse. The music keeps playing ("Time to test it/let's give it your best stuff/don't sweat it/time to test it/let's get messed up/throw your best stuff") and the boxers keep boxing, and as the blood flies, I am reminded once more why I despise this alleged "sport" on the professional level. The ref lets the bald fighter lean against the ropes while the other boxer beats him to a bloody pulp; in the stands, a cheap blonde in a tacky red dress and one of those diamond necklaces Madonna would have worn during her Material Girl phase is standing up and cheering loudly for the pummeller. After the bald man's been sufficiently pounded, the referee snaps out of his reverie and calls the round. The bald man, Laroi, heads back to his corner, where Roma Maffia awaits. Hasn't he suffered enough for one night? In any event, his keepers cajole him into going another round. A girl in a gold bikini saunters out with the card -- I'll be darned, this is taking place at the Venetian, not the Mandalay Bay -- and we see the cheap blonde in the red dress one more time. She's brought a cowboy with her. The bikini babe walks by, the man tips his hat, and the blonde elbows him and shouts something unintelligible, but clearly meant as a rebuke. Laroi's handlers exhort him to go back into the ring, a decision they come to regret as the round ends with Laroi, unable to dodge any of his opponent's blows, dropping dead.
In the scene, someone has rolled Laroi over from the position in which he died -- on his stomach -- to his back. My guess is that it happened when someone tried to revive him, but why Laroi wasn't rushed to the hospital is anyone's guess. I can't see him being left in the ring, especially after what was supposed to have been a high-profile bout. Getting people out of that arena must have been a nightmare. Gil walks in, looking dolefully at the body. Warrick is at his heels. Brass, who's already in the ring, leans against the ropes and says, "Laroi 'Fists of' Steele." I can't help but think this might be a shout-out to this site and its editorial tendencies toward christening characters with interstitial nicknames, cf. Mark "You Make My Face" Greene. Warrick, who evidently follows boxing, says, "WFB welterweight champion. Nineteen wins." Gil looks down at the body and says, "One loss." Brass looks unsurprised at Gil's reaction. Gil continues, "Boxers have died in the ring before. Why is this one a crime?" Brass tells us: "Casino management got a heads-up from the sports book. Five hours before the opening bell, Steele went from a two-to-one favorite to a five-to-one underdog." Warrick asks, "Fight fixing?" Brass nods. Gil says, "That's a felony. If death occurs during the commission of a felony, that's a murder." Gil stands there, satisfied that he's gotten in the last word as The Who's opening chords are about to whisk us to the credits...and then his beeper goes off and his expression morphs into huh? Gil pulls out his pager as Warrick stands there, looking askance, as if he's expecting to see Pete Townsend performing windmills to his immediate left. Gil checks the message, and we hear the song rewinding. How meta! Now that is a shout-out, y'all.
Gil is now ducking under police tape and walking over to where our young bald friend is -- that is, lying on the pavement. Guess Bel, Biv, or DeVoe caught up with him. Or maybe Bobby Brown -- he seems to be something of a wild card. Catherine -- who's sporting a new, curly do that caused the husband to emit low growls from the depths of the couch (they sounded disturbingly like, "Yessss! Yessss! Pretty hair! My precious!") -- puts down the camera --
The husband: How are you slandering me now?Me: You make a damn fine mess too. I said nothing about your cooking, which is wonderful, by the way. Just the mess.
Me: This is coming from the same person who used to pout if he wasn't in the recaps.
The husband: After that kitchen comment, you make me sound incompetent. I make a damn fine meatloaf, I make a damn fine mousse --
The husband: Now you're making me sound disturbed.
Me: Well, you disturbed me.
The husband: Now you're just being hateful.
Me: Baby, no! What can I do to make it up to you?
The husband: Do your hair like Catherine's! It's soft and smells like flowers, I know it.
Catherine tells Gil, "Gang member." The non-hot, non-Lockwood police officer (we've seen him before) tells us, "Tenth Street Vandals." Will they be feuding with the Fourth Avenue Huns, or the Cherry Lane Burgundians? Do they owe allegiance to the Visigoths or the Ostrogoths? Am I milking this joke for all it's worth? Gil's full of questions too: "Isolated incidents, or on a roll?" Detective Vega replies, "Hard to tell. The Vandals are based in L.A., but on a weekend like this...brings the knuckleheads in." I wonder what they say about Comdex? Gil asks if there were witnesses, and Catherine replies, "They were all in the bathroom." Gil rolls his eyes with a baroque flourish and says, "Aren't they always?" He looks pretty tired -- must be pre-credits fatigue. The camera pans over the body and a bloodstained flyer for the fight lying on the ground to it. Gil's beeper goes off again, and he reads the message: "Call Nick Stokes." It's 11:24 on a Saturday night. Do you know where your rage-filled Texan is?
Why, she's at the jewelry store, saying, "I am not giving this back until I get my ring!" Hey, it's the cheap blonde from the fight scene, living in her material world and making life miserable for a store manager who is patiently explaining that Little Miss L'Oreal is going to have to wait for her bauble, what with someone having broken into the store and stolen it, along with a great many other costly trinkets. The man in the cowboy hat just stands there, subdued. Perhaps he's too drunk to care. The manager tries again with, "Mrs. Ramsey, it is not our policy to allow clients to --" Ramsey cuts in with, "Oh, really? Well, I guess you need a new policy, don't you?" I guess she needs a lesson in how to deal with human beings. The manager snaps, "Now you are being unreasonable," and the two fade into the background as the camera swoops over to where Nicky and his CSI vest are busy taking pictures. I wonder if it's protocol to wear that after certain types of crimes, or if Gil just got tired of Nicky being held at gunpoint, flung through windows, et cetera, and ordered him to wear protective gear? Gil comes over, and Nicky fills him in: "Smash-and-grab. Left that behind." "That" would appear to be a length of lead pipe. Gil asks how many people did it, and Nicky says, "One." Gil's eyebrows go shooting up, and Nicky explained that the lone stranger waited until the manager was alone -- and presumably fatigued after assisting Mrs. Ramsey at the beginning of the evening -- and "knocked her out. Hopped the counter and got away with a whole sackful of stones. It takes some stones to pull off a job like this." Before Gil can snap, "They're called gonads, Nicky!" Sara's walked up. She asks, "What've we got?" Gil tells her, "Well, you and I have got a dead boxer. Nicky, you're going to get to run this solo." Nicky decides to keep the cartwheels until Gil and Sara are a respectable distance away, and contents himself with saying, "Yeah?" Gil, instead of conceding that perhaps Nicky's actually capable of doing this, says, "We're tapped out. Welcome to fight night."
And now The Who kicks in.
After the commercials, we're back in the ring. By the way, the CBS ID floating in the bottom of the screen, reading "CSI:" with nothing after the colon, really irks me. Why have a colon if it's not introducing items in a series, linking an independent clause to a second independent clause that amplifies or interprets the first, or introducing a statement or quotation? That's like having the title "Hack;" or "Robbery Homicide Division --." This punctuation gaffe must be stopped. Sara's working in Steele's corner, and Warrick's in Molina's. Sara asks Warrick what she's looking for, and Warrick tells her, "Blinding agents in the Vaseline, stimulants in the water..." Sara begins appraising the area, asking, "So everything goes to Tox?" Warrick confirms this. Sara reads my mind and says, "Nice sport." Warrick replies, "It's only dirty when you make it dirty. You know, boxing's about discipline." Sara replies, "Two guys beating their brains out in a race for early-onset Parkinson's." The connection between Parkinson's Disease and boxing-related triggers is still not fully understood; the evidence is piling up that anyone who sustained repeated blows to the head is at risk for developing Dementia Pugelistica, which can bring about early onset of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, but there is a suspicion that boxers who develop Parkinson's or Alzheimer's had a genetic predisposition towards those diseases anyway, and the repeated head injuries exacerbate the onset (Jordan BD, Relkin NR, Ravdin LD, et al: Apolipoprotein E epsilon4 associated with chronic traumatic brain injury in boxing. JAMA 1997;278(2):136-140, Corder EH, Saunders AM, Strittmatter WJ, et al: Gene dose of apolipoprotein E type 4 allele and the risk of Alzheimer's disease in late onset families. Science 1993; 261(5123):921-923).
Warrick elects to skip over the science, and says, "No, no, mind and body. If you train one and not the other, you're half a person." Warrick then walks over to where Sara's crouching over a bucket and asks, "What'd you find?" Sara, who's wearing a Joker-like grin, grits, "Sa-liva." Warrick gaily replies, "Oh, the spit bucket!" Still grinning, Sara slowly walks the bucket over. Warrick wants to know what's so funny, and Sara explains through a locked-jaw grin that "smiling, uh, suppresses the gag reflex." Warrick's incredulous: "This is coming from the same woman who processed fecal fat from a ruptured colon." It's wrong to laugh at the phrase "fecal fat," and yet, I'm cracking up as I sit here, softly repeating it. Go on, say it a few times. The whimsical music kicks up in the background as Sara explains, "Every crim's got a problem area. Mine's saliva." Warrick offers to take it for her. Sara refuses. Warrick asks, "You sure?" and Sara reiterates. He's pretty amused by this, and wanders off to let Sara handle the spit herself. Meanwhile, some clown in a bow tie -- oh, he's the referee who was napping during the rounds -- explains to Gil and Brass how the two boxers hated each other, and how Steele had beaten Molina like a drum in their two prior matches. Brass muses, "Two wins by knockout, tonight he dies. What's up with that?" The ref asks what Brass might mean, and Gil tags in: "Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about either fighter? Slowed reactions, unusual strength?" The ref replies, "All I noticed is that boy took one hell of a beating." Couldn't the ref have, you know, refereed that? Did nobody learn from the Gabe Ruelas/Jimmy Garcia fight? (I got that reference from the husband, who tells me that it's a boxing match which went on for far too long and ended in Garcia's death.) Gil just gives the ref a look.
Meanwhile, Catherine and Vega go wandering among the parking lot where the bald boy was killed. Catherine notices a spent shell casing and drops the yellow crime scene marker (#1) down to it. She then notices a gun, but the thrill of discovery is quickly diminished as Vega finds his own gun a moment later. Catherine keeps wandering about (looking for a telltale copy of "That Girl Is Poison"), and after finding a third gun, as Vega finds the fourth, she comments, "We could put up a couple of booths and have ourselves a gun show." Vega explains, "Disposable firearms. They know we can't link them to the weapons if we can't find the weapons on them." Catherine assesses the gun -- "Smith & Wesson 40. High end" -- and Vega says, "They're stealing their way to better guns." Catherine's not happy about this, what with Bel, Biv, or DeVoe using Vegas as target practice.
While Catherine collects firearms, Nicky meticulously works the broken jewelry case, noting the blood on some of the glass fragments and deducing that it came from a careless thief sticking his or her hand in at the wrong angle. He swabs the blood, and the manager comes over, handing Nicky a sheaf of paper and saying, "That's everything he's got." Nicky wants to know why it's highlighted, and the manager explains, "It's a Riviera necklace. We loaned it to a couple for the fight, and they refuse to return it until we return the ring that they brought in for cleaning." Nicky says, "Which was stolen along with the other items, right?" The manager says petulantly, "Exactly. And they won't leave until they get this all sorted out. Can you help me out here?" Nicky says, "Sorry. Mediation's not really my thing. Rage is. Want me to add them to my Kill List? There's room in the top twenty-five if you act now." Or maybe he stops after the mediation part. The manager sarcastically thanks him; he says, "No problem," which is either humor that's so subtle it sailed over my head, or her tone sailed over his. Then Nicky pulls out the phone, hits a button on speed-dial, and gets Buzz the detective. He tells him, "Listen, I'm at a smash-and-grab, lot of glass, a little blood. Do me a favor -- check out the local hospitals, anyone comes in with a forearm laceration could be our guy." While Nicky's talking, we get a better look at the Ramseys. She looks like she's searching for Spouse #2. He looks like he's searching for someone to put him out of his misery.
Speaking of misery, it's Roma Maffia, and she's telling Gil, "I promoted this match, Mr. Grissom. I spent sixteen months of my life stroking fighters, managers, handlers, and kissing a whole lot of ass that never got past junior high. I resent the implication that the fight was fixed, or that Laroi Steele's death was anything other than a tragedy." Somehow, that last phrase seems a little calculated. Gil, meanwhile, is looking at a series of Polaroids which show Molina's injuries in startling detail. Gil asks if Molina uses the photographs for motivation. Roma replies, "And for show. Boxing is theatre." Gil says, "Well, according to your poster, this fight was about revenge." Roma claims that it's really all about the benjamins, and any subtext is merely part of the marketing. Gil pulls Molina's gloves out of a container and establishes that they were his. Roma says, "Technically, after a fight, those gloves become the property of the boxing commission." Gil thinks the boxing commission can take a number: "They're evidence, so they belong to me." Isn't he saucy tonight? Beep over a man's theme song and reap the whirlwind, I guess. Roma's all, "What do you think you're going to find on those gloves -- liniment? Like Sonny Liston used to blind Cassius Clay? The sport has come a long way since then." Gil begs to differ: "Two skulls and four fists: it hasn't come that far." He's then distracted by actual evidence. A few brief taps of the flashlight on the locker shelf and a query from Roma later, and we've got liquid mercury. Well. That's not something they ever covered in Rocky.
Warrick and Sara are walking down the corridors of a hospital, past a guy with a huge laceration in his arm (oh, the overlapping plots!), which prompts Warrick to comments, "Looks like it was fight night for a lot of people." Sara replies, "And some guys get paid a million bucks for it." And some people just can't let it go.
We then meet Molina, who's quite the pissy little charmer. I mean that literally: he's giving a urine sample in front of Sara and Warrick. Let's hope he doesn't shake hands without washing first. Once he's passed off the sample, he asks, "So, ¿Que onda? What's the crime lab want with me?" Warrick says, "Well, for starters, we need to see your hands." Molina asks, "Why?" Sara immediately asks, "Is that a 'no'?" He hastily assures her that it's not. The two of them then swab his hands. Molina then gets a crazy-like look and says, "Now, who do you think you're looking at? Felix Trinidad?" Sara asks Warrick who that is, and Warrick explains that Felix Trinidad was a fighter who was once accused of dipping his wraps in ice water before a fight so they'd harden into a cast, thus adding extra oomph to the punches. Molina, who's been preening in front of a mirror, adds, "It also shreds your hands. My hands are clean." Warrick says levelly, "A fighter's lost his life. We're just making sure there's no unfair advantage." Molina claims that all he did was punch his way to victory. He says, "You think I wanted it to go down like this. People are going to remember me like Ray Mancini, who killed that Korean guy. That's my legacy now." "That Korean guy," by the way, was named Duk Koo-Kim, and he deserves to have his name remembered too. Molina then pleads innocence, and claims that Laroi was responsible for his own death owing to his trash-talking habit and his imprudent decision to come out in the seventh round: "I knew it was over right then." Sara asks, "So why did you keep hitting him?" Molina claims, "Because real fighters don't stop hitting until somebody makes them, all right?" That seems to contradict Warrick's claim that real boxers have both mental and physical discipline, unless the definition of mental discipline has been stretched to include "mindlessly flog someone, then disclaim any responsibility for doing so." Molina then shifts more of the blame for Laroi's death onto the referee, who should have stopped him: "One word from that ref, and I would have stopped. But he never gave the word."
While Sara and Warrick are left to ponder this paradigm of personal responsibility, ballistics tech Bobby gives Catherine some good news and some bad news. The good news: All the bullets came from the same gun -- six right, .380. The bad news: "We're oh-for-two matching the bullets to the guns y'all recovered. I did find something on one of them shells if you want to take a look. It's set up for you over there." Catherine's happy: "It could be biological. I'll send it to Trace." Bobby's thinking that's the way she's going to have to go, since the bullets are now zero-for-three on matching the guns.
Back to Sara and Warrick. As they're leaving Molina in the hospital, Warrick's whipping out the cell phone and calling Brass, asking for the 411 on the ref. Sara's bobbing along behind him when along comes Hank. The two of them peel off, and Sara awkwardly tells Warrick, "I-I'll be right there." He seems oblivious. Sara and Hank make their way over to the ambulance bay, and Hank tells Sara, "We gave Molina a ride in." Sara's thrilled: "You did?" Hank stems Sara's expectations of punch-drunk confessions: "He didn't say much, which is no big surprise, considering. There's not much in here, but I know how, uh, you like to see everything." Some men say it with flowers; Hank says it with evidence. You've got to give the boy points for effort. Sara looks genuinely touched, and says, "Thanks." And Hank really did give her the gift that keeps on giving: Molina's hand wraps, which happen to have mercury on them.
Meanwhile, David the Anti-Boxing Coroner and Gil are going over Laroi's body. After assessing Laroi's massive soft-tissue damage, David wonders, "Are they letting guys go at each other with clubs now?" Gil shoots back, "Only on cable." David looks at a giant mass of swollen tissue on Laroi's face and comments, "It never ceases to amaze me, the damage one human being can inflict on another." If Sara were here, she'd talk about how people were getting paid to do so. Gil focuses instead on the resiliency of the human body relative to what it can sustain: "A heavyweight can land a punch at a thousand pounds per square inch. The energy of the punch is transferred through the cerebrospinal fluid, compressing the brain against the skull, temporarily disrupting neural activity. It's like a short circuit. Too many short circuits, the brain shuts down." As Gil explains this, we see it happening in slow, TMICam motion, where Laroi is getting the snot pounded out of him while his brain rattles around absorbing all that pressure. Eventually, he falls. Gil and David stare at the pulpy face for a little bit, and Gil finally notes that the bruising around the chin seems a little heavy. David noticed that too, and he walks Gil over to the results of the postmortem angiogram he did. He explains, "It's a basilar subarachnoid hematoma, the result of a massive vertical trauma to the chin." Which we also see in TMICam, so that each droplet of blood vaults in a lazy arc toward the viewer in stark red on a black-and-white screen. Thanks, guys!
David explains further, "The forced rotation of the neck tears the vertebral artery, and blood pours out into the surrounding soft tissue." More TMICam, this time of blood flowing over assorted ropy pink parts. Gil pauses for a moment, then says curtly, "It's called an uppercut." David smoothly replies, "You say tomato, I say cause of death. Gil, I never had you pegged as a fight fan." Gil clarifies, "I'm not, really. My first year as a criminalist, I thought boxing would be a good place to observe live blood spatter. So I went to a couple of bouts. There wasn't much spatter. There were some interesting bruise formations, though." The beginnings of a smile are lurking in the corner of David's beard as he asks, "So this is a socially acceptable live-subject laboratory for you?" Gil replies, "Not in this case." First of all -- how typically Grissomian is it to study boxing in a forensic context? Second -- forget this Gil and Sara thing; the real fun is in watching Gil and David. Those two just play off each other, and it's rarely dull. A lab tech comes in and hands over the preliminary tox results, and David raises the alarm: "Professional athlete. Would have expected performance enhancers, uh, creatine, dianobol. This man had sufentanil in his system." This startles Gil, as sufentanil is a sedative. Before we go to commercial (and about time, I say), Gil muses, "So if the fighter won't take a dive, help him take a dive."
Brass is pursuing this line of inquiry by talking to a man who sounds as though he gargles with bleach. He asking what his cousin has to do with the fight; Brass tells us all, "Your cousin bet twenty grand on Javier Molina at five-to-one against." The man shrugs this off with, "He's always been a lucky guy." Brass isn't buying it. With a smile, he says, "You know how it works: you hear the fight's fixed, you tip off your cousin for a piece of the action, he tells a few friends, so on, so on...they make a bet and the odds go south." The two men mouth platitudes about the ethereal nature of money in Vegas. Brass eventually works around to the point -- the guy in question is the ref, who apparently spends his downtime tooling around in business casual wear, and Brass thinks that he called the fight with his own financial interests at heart, as opposed to actually officiating in a way that observes the rules of the sport. I am shocked, shocked to discover that there are crooked referees in boxing. The ref asks, "You charging me with something?" and Brass feigns innocence as he says, "No! Not yet."
Meanwhile, it's turning into a very good night for Nicky. Remember the guy with the lacerated forearm who was waiting in the hospital when Sara and Warrick went by earlier? He's waiting in a curtained area in the ER when Buzz throws back the curtains and asks, "Randy Watkins?" Randy looks as though he's not too pleased to see local law enforcement. I don't blame him; Nicky is hovering over Buzz's shoulder, and the look on his face is kind of scary. He then leans in, all business, and asks, "Where'd you get the cut on your forearm, man? You practicing for a job at Benihana?" "Man"? "Where'd you get the cut on your forearm, man"? When did Nicky become a Beat poet? He's seen the criminal minds of his generation captured by Gil, put down, outsmarted, apprehended, caught, dragging themselves through the Vegas streets at dawn leaving evidence...ahem. Randy assesses his current situation and snivels, "It is a hospital. I got doctor/patient privilege, don't I?" It's too bad there's not a lawyer and a priest in the room too -- he'd have hit the trifecta in the professional confidentiality derby. Nicky tells Randy that the stolen property on his wrist more or less negates any confidentiality privileges he might have. Randy looks thunderstruck as Buzz says, "You can trade that bracelet for this one." You just know he spends his spare time in the squad room thinking up these lines.
And now, the scene where we are all embarrassed on behalf of Liam the Lab Tech. He's bopping around the lab, shouting, "Ladies and gentlemen! In this corner, wearing red leather coming from the great fighting city of Everlast, USA, the gloves that Javier Molina wore when he killed Laroi Steele. This is a piece of boxing history. Do you know how much this would go for on eBay?" Going by the looks on Warrick and Gil's faces, they're torn between advising Liam not to quit his day job and demanding that he follow his bliss and become a boxing announcer. Gil finally cuts off Liam's verbal fusillade by asking him, "The residue on the gloves: what is it?" Liam replies, "Half inorganic salts -- magnesium, potassium, et cetera -- and half organic derivatives -- choline and uric acid." Gil says shortly, "Sweat." Warrick, who still looks as though he'd rather be anywhere else, drawls, "Occasionally found at a boxing match." Oh, God, Liam's not done yet. He turns and bring out something else, introducing it with: "In this corner, fighting way out of his weight class, coming from...that place that textiles come from, a cotton swab, soaked in sufentanil." Oh, now Warrick's interested: "Sufentanil. I did recover that swab from the victim's corner." Gil decrees that it's time to talk to the cut man.
So sayeth Gil, so goeth the scene. Two boxers are pounding each other senseless in a dramatically lit gymnasium as the cut man explains, "I would've gotten a bonus if we won. Why would I mess with the guy who pays me?" Brass isn't interested in the rhetorical questions, and Warrick's interested in inferring a chain of events: "Your guy, your corner, your swab." The cut man says, "I've been doing this twenty-eight years. Back when every man around was using Monsel's solution, getting it in kids' eyes, blinding them? I wouldn't touch the stuff." Now I'm all curious about Monsel's solution -- and you know you are too. It's an iron compound made by dissolving iron, sulfuric acid, and nitric acid, and is used as a blood-coagulating styptic on a wound site after operations. You can see why it would be popular in the boxing ring -- too bad about that whole acid-eating-away-at-the-eyes thing. The cut man then vows eternal loyalty to Laroi; he was in his corner for six fights, and apparently Laroi paid well. Warrick then notices the giant poster of a glowering Molina, which leads to the revelation that Molina owns this gym. Brass begins insinuating things: "You're looking for work..." The cut man is having none of it: "Work comes to me." It's the battle of the hard-bitten bald guys, and it looks like it's going to be a draw. Brass hands over a subpoena for the cut man's bag. Warrick opens it and looks inside, remarking, "It's kind of primitive." "So is boxing," shoots the cut man. I like this guy. I want him around as a Greek chorus for future cases.
Gil and Sara are descending into the basement of the labitrail and discussing mercury. Unfortunately, they are not talking about the sui generis lead singer of Queen, but rather, the element found at the crime scene. Sara tells Gil that she traced it back to Molina's personal physician in Mexico: "It turns out mercury is used in a folk remedy for empacho; it's a chronic stomach condition." Gil wants to know if Molina has this condition. Sara says that his medical records confirm it. Sara's all, "The guy eats metal." Gil says, "It's not the eating that will get you -- the poison's in the vapor. It's toxic." Sara says, "Well, I guess we're left with the sedative. Any luck?" Gil says bleakly, "Liam's working on it."
As the two of them wander by the ballistics lab, we see Catherine talking to Bobby about matching a bullet, any bullet, to the profusion of guns they found at the scene, and what it means when there's no match. Bob replies, "The shooter kept his weapon." Catherine muses, "It means he likes his weapon, and has probably used it before." Bob gets a flash of insight: "Which is where the shell casing and IBAS come in. I'll run it against the national database." Catherine says happily, "Firing pin impressions and breach face marks a closer look." Bob reports that they've got a match -- the L.A. county sheriff's office found shell casings from the same gun used in a gang murder two years ago; the perpetrator, one Timothy Fontaine (a.k.a. "Tiny Tim"), a Snakeback, beat the rap. His current whereabouts are unknown, but that doesn't deter Catherine. Bob grins appreciatively at this. All the lab techs love Catherine, oh yes, they do. From the couch, the husband clarifies, "Everyone loves Catherine."
Catherine's walking across a casino pool deck toward someone, telling Vega as she goes, "I guess Tiny's mother can be proud of one thing: he sure knows how to clean a room." Vega smarms, "There is one Snakeback still in town...that guy right over there." Catherine watches Bel, Biv, or DeVoe preening for a camera as his arm candy goggles appreciatively and his posse poses in the background. She asks, "What's his dealio?" Vega tells us that it's Jerome Anderson -- we can hear him in the background, saying faintly, "I'm The Man, I take care of my people..." -- a former Snakeback who's reinvented himself as a record producer, clothing designer, and sports agent. Catherine wants to know why Vega doesn't have a warrant for The Man's room, and Vega says defensively, "We're working on it. He's got an entire law firm on retainer." As Catherine walks over, The Man's busy babbling, "Five percent here, ten percent there -- better get back in the ring, Laroi, and keep on fighting. See, what Laroi needed was a giver, not a taker. That's why he came to me, The Man, so I could stand by his side and give him honest representation." I'm thinking Sean Combs and Suge Knight are busy contacting the law firms they keep on retainer right about now. As Catherine and Vega come over, The Man swings into extemporaneous hyperbole: "Police -- another thing The Man understands, because he comes from the same place as today's athletes." The Island of Illeists?
Vega and Catherine introduce themselves, and The Man reassures them -- in the third person, of course -- that he has nothing to hide. Vegas asks after Tiny Tim, and The Man replies, "The Man is here on business." Catherine tartly cuts in, "So are we. Do you mind if I ask how The Man got the burn mark on his neck?" Well, we know it's not from a curling iron. He replies, "Well. All the ladies say that the man is hot" -- so is steaming bullshit, I might add -- "so I must have just burned myself and forgot all about it." Just then, some young man in baggy clothes does a walk-by performance of the Funky Chicken, thus inflaming The Man's aesthetic sensibilities to the point where he has to be restrained by his posse. Catherine takes this all in, and dryly comments, "I guess you are hot." The Man replies, "Oh, that's old. The Man is all about the new." I need a new bottle of Advil after him.
Back at the labitrail, Warrick is sitting in front of the computer running a fingerprint search when Gil walks in and asks about the result of Warrick's quality time with the cut man. Warrick says, "We found a bottle of sufentanil and a bottle of coagulant in the guy's kit." Gil muses, "That doesn't make sense. If the cut man did it, why would he hold onto the evidence?" Warrick was thinking along the same lines -- and what's more, he doesn't know if the cut man was even aware of the sufentanil, as the prints on the bottle match Gerry Barone, who was Laroi's manager. Gil shakes his head in disgust, commenting, "And I thought Don King was bad."
And here's Gerry now, about to receive the full force of Warrick's contempt with a side of Brass. He's explaining to the two of them, "The reason my prints are in the system is I'm a foster parent. Six kids in thirty years. Treated them like my own -- trained them, took them off the streets..." Brass has no interest in hearing about what good Gerry may have done for society. He wants to know why Gerry's messing with the sufentanil. Warrick explains that they found the prints on the bottle. Gerry says, "I was trying to save Laroi." Warrick reacts incredulously: "By drugging him?" Gerry continues, "We kept it out of the press, but in their last fight, Molina hurt him bad...the signs were all there in training: sagging eye, drooping shoulder, brain damage down the road. Laroi couldn't handle another beating, but I couldn't talk him out of this fight. Molina got under his skin. Laroi wouldn't let it go. I taught him not to quit. I was trying to get him alive. Laroi was sixteen years old the first time I saw him fight, and the only thing faster than his hands was his mouth. There was this one time he made his sparring partner laugh so hard, the man pissed his trunks before he fell on the mat. Can you imagine that?" I bet the TMICam can -- thank God it's elsewhere. As Gerry's talking, it's evident that he really cared for Laroi, and is taking this hard. Warrick makes the sensitive face -- eyebrows raised, eyes downcast, not looking as surly as the similar "beleaguered face."
Hey! It's Nicky! Who's managed to both arrest Randy and recover all the jewelry! All before the forty-minute mark, which should set off the screaming klaxons of panic right about now! He's busy dealing with the Texas Tornado herself, who's thanking him effusively. She wanders off to put on the ring, but Nicky catches her by the elbow and asks her to fill out some documentation before he can release the ring. Mr. Ramsey, who has an eye-level view of the ring, finally speaks: "That's not your ring." The wife is in denial -- "Of course it is!" she sings, yanking back her hand to prevent further scrutiny. The mister's pretty insistent: "I'm telling you, that is not the ring I gave you. That stone has a different cut." Mrs. Ramsey tries a different approach with, "Now I wore this ring on my finger every day for five years. I think that I --" "I bought you that ring. Who do you think spent a week looking for the perfect stone for our first anniversary?" His personal assistant? Nicky's face unfreezes from its Why can't I have cannibal cheerleaders instead of squabbling rich people for my solo investigation? expression, and he tells everyone that he matched the ring to a log of items stolen. Mr. Ramsey gets all upset: "Then maybe you should explain to me why I'm not looking at my wife's ring." The wife doesn't seem too unhappy about the ring she did get; maybe we should explore that angle instead. Nicky's stunned that anyone can't see the honesty shining from his eyes at fifty feet. He designs toys for children, for Pete's sake! Who doesn't trust society's toy makers?
Mrs. Ramsey tries to make a graceful exit, but the mister is having none of it, and now he's accusing Nicky of switching the ring for a counterfeit. Because in the few hours it took to solve the case, Nicky had time to whip up a plausibly realistic counterfeit? Girl, please. Nicky replies, "That's not the way it works." Mr. Ramsey's not so sure about that: "So you screw the out-of-towners" -- that's right, Nicky's a regionally biased counterfeiter, because that's an easy way to pick up beer money -- "and nobody's going to care, right?" Nicky's got a disbelieving grin on his face as he asks, "You making a formal accusation?" Mr. Ramsey shakes off his wife -- who still seems to want to get out in a hurry, which would, in a rational world, arouse some measure of suspicion -- and says, "You bet I am." Nicky replies, "Knock yourself out, big dog. The forms are at the front desk." "Big dog"? Is this a socially acceptable form of address in Texas? Mr. Ramsey stalks off to do paperwork. The missus stays behind to smile awkwardly at Nicky. He should start getting suspicious right about now.
Back at the boxing plotline, Warrick and Sara are watching recordings of the press conferences, and as they watch, Sara notices that Laroi was slurring his words. Warrick then fast-forwards to the fight and points out Laroi's drooping shoulder to Sara. Sara shakes her head incredulously and says, "Manager was right -- pugilistic dementia." Warrick replies, "They say eight out of ten boxers suffer some sort of brain damage later in life." Who is this "they" of whom you speak? Sara trots out Exhibit A in the form of Ali, although Ali has claimed in interviews that he thinks his Parkinson's has nothing to do with his boxing career. Sara muses, "He must have known what was happening to him." Warrick explains, "He would never admit it. Fighters need to psych themselves up before a fight to believe they're going to win. Or they're never gonna fight." Suddenly, Ali's claims about the Parkinson's take on a whole new meaning. Sara adds, "Every opponent Laroi Steele fought contributed to his death. I don't know if he was incredibly stupid or just...brave."
Meanwhile Puf-- I mean, "The Man" is busy smirking while his attack lawyers coolly tell Vega and Catherine why they're breaking the law by hauling The Man in for questioning. As Catherine pulls a swab out of a box, she says, "Contest all you want. It's still coming after the fact." She directs The Man to open wide. Vega, who appears to have gone to Kim Delaney Elocution Classes during the commercial break, says, "The warrant [beat] was based [beat] on physical evidence." The lawyer says the burn mark could have happened anywhere. Catherine replies, "Jerome is under the misguided impression that he's a one-man pyrotechnic display." The Man grins at all the big words being used to describe him -- "They're talking about me, so it's good!" Catherine continues, "Watch too many movies and kids start to think that people actually shoot like that." We see someone shooting a gun sideways, with the bullet barking The Man in the neck. The lawyer counters that the most anyone will prove is that The Man is in the area. Catherine assures everyone that if The Man's DNA is found on the shell casing, she'll be delighted to extend the scope of the warrant.
Because we haven't heard The Man bloviate enough, Vega asks him why a former Hoya should turn stupid. Catherine adds, "We all know you forget what the word 'loyalty' means as soon as you turn away from the mirror. So what do the Snakebacks get you." Oh, goody, we're in for another monologue from The Man: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, baby...(switching to a painfully overenunciated dialect) I went to school. In fact, I have carefully analyzed business models of African-American entrepreneurs such as Darian Kaze at Dis-Kard Enterprises, which grosses $250 million a year. And my analysis has led me to understand that an emerging CEO needs to have as solid a command of flowcharts and spreadsheets as he does a bad-assed street rep. And let me tell you, sweetness, I got it all, coming and going, so the more you try to stress me, the more you're just selling me to the people out on the streets." But is The Man dating a callipygian, high-maintenance singing/acting/dancing superstar from the 'hood? Because that's when he'll really be successful. Catherine says, "So crime pays?" The Man performs The Dance Of Evading Personal Responsibility by saying, "Don't hate the player. Hate the game." Catherine points out via sarcasm, "You don't make the rules -- you just exploit them." The Man makes it clear that whatever tears of remorse he weeps during pangs of guilt are dried by the pillowy softness of a well-worn hundred-dollar bill or two.
Off in the C-plot, Nicky is busy discovering to nobody's great surprise that the stone in the ring is not a diamond. He wanders out into the hall to report this, or maybe to refresh his memory as to who's wronged him recently. It's anyone's guess. Gil cruises past and tells Nicky, "Nice work on that jewelry heist." In the background, a minor demon goes ice-skating by, barely avoiding a crash with a pig that's cruising at low altitude. Nicky's forced to admit that it's not over yet. Gil's not comprehending how this isn't over. "You got the guy," he points out. Nicky asks bluntly, "Why are you tossing me a softball when everyone else is on real cases." Gil, looking confused, reminds him, "You wanted to work solo." Nicky replies, "Yeah, but it's Night of the Pifflings out there and I'm on a snatch-and-grab." Gil is even more confused than ever: "'Pifflings'?" Nicky says, "Puffin offspring." Gil tilts an eyebrow skyward. Nicky elaborates, "First time out of the nest every year, they crash and land near this town in Iceland because they're attracted by the lights of human civilization. It's the same way people flock to Vegas for a fight." Gil studies Nicky for a moment -- probably wondering if Nicky's parody of Gil's anecdotes was deliberate -- and says, "Animal Planet," before walking off. Now that's the Gil we know and love. As Gil walks off, Nicky shouts, "How come when you talk about bugs, everyone says you're a genius, but when I talk about birds, everyone says I watch too much television?" Because you don't have a Ph.D in ornithology? Gil's more tactful: "I don't know. Look -- the night of the pifflings, you get the first dead body." Off Gil goes, leaving Nicky to write a detailed account of the conversation in his anger diary before he checks the Discovery Channel website for programming information. But I really do love that the writers keep returning to the conceit that Nicky's hooked on bird shows. I'm taking that bird mention tonight as a shout-out to all the times I've harped on it in past recaps.
Meanwhile, Gil's kept on walking, right into a conference room where David the Antipugilistic Coroner is holding forth on more of Laroi's injuries. Long story short: Many of the bones in his face were broken as the result of extremely powerful blows, and those blows couldn't have been made with normal boxing gloves. Sara says, "We checked Molina's gloves. There's nothing in them or on them." Gil replies, "Well, we're missing something." Just then, Liam is frog-marched in by a sweater so dangerously ugly, it should come with an armed guard to subdue it. He announces, "We have a problem. For posterity, I took it upon myself to establish the provenance for the killer gloves. I mean, DNA-wise. On my own time, of course, of which I have precious little, so that should count for something --" As Liam's nattering on, Gil is getting progressively more tense, and he finally snaps with, "Why are you always doing this?" Liam says matter-of-factly, "Because you make me nervous." Everyone on the forums, wave your hands in the air, like you've just gotten a shout-out. Gil looks startled by this news; I think he forgets that he's unnerving. David and Warrick can't hide their amusement at either Liam or Gil, while Sara keeps a strict poker face. Liam continues, "My point is, the epithelials found on the surface of the glove are not Laroi's epithelials. Those aren't the gloves that killed him."
Gil and Warrick have taken this news and run right back to the locker room with it. Warrick uses a pair of bolt-cutters to open Molina's locker; then they examine the stiff new gloves hanging in the locker. Warrick looks down at the floor of the locker and notices a lot of small red dots -- red leather circles. Gil finds more mercury in the locker grate. Warrick says, "Molina does take it for his stomach, right?" Gil snorts, "He's a sloppy eater." The two leave the locker room and walk back toward the ring in the center of Molina's gym as Gil explains, "Mercury's volatile. It emits a toxic vapor." Warrick confirms, "If I find the vapor, I find the mercury." Warrick then dons a pair of goggles last used by James Marsden when filming The X-Men, plugs in what looks to be a portable UV light, and begins casing the joint for vapor. He eventually finds something on one of the punching bags. When he and Gil shine their light, there's a shimmery vapor visible. Gil smiles in satisfaction. Sara, in the meantime, is going through Molina's wrappings, piecing them all together and reading the signature.
Cue Roma Maffia saying, "Yeah, that's my signature. So what?" Brass says, "Well, according to fight rules, you were supposed to watch Molina wrap his hands and sign [the wraps], then tie his gloves and sign [the gloves]." Roma insists that she did that; Sara concedes the wraps, then drops the bombshell that the gloves they found were not the gloves used in the fight, so Molina switched. Roma instantly says, "There's no way." Brass asks, "You watched Molina glove up?" Roma says, "Not exactly." Then you don't have a leg to stand on in the "no way" argument, do you? Roma explains, "Look, it was a big fight, there was a lot of pressure, you've got to give the guys a little space." Like the space to violate the rules of the sport? Oh, lady, give me a break. Sara says with some amount of barely concealed glee, "So no one saw him put his gloves on?" Brass gives Roma the hairy eyeball, and she snippily says, "I guess not."
Meanwhile, the C-plot wraps up, with Mrs. Ramsey saying sweetly, "I should have called you first to apologize for my husband's unfortunate outburst." Nicky's not having any of it: "You should apologize, but not for your husband." Mrs. Ramsey turns all ninety-six of her blinding teeth on Nicky and asks, "Excuse me?" Nicky explains, "You know damn well your diamond isn't a diamond. It's a substance called moissanite...white light refractions and inclusions on your stone are inconsistent with a real diamond." Mrs. Ramsey's eyes roll around in syncopation with the gears spinning in her head, and she replies, "Then...the thief must have switched the stone before you caught him." Nicky's not having any of that either: "Before the store could clean your ring, I was able to collect DNA." Mrs. Ramsey says flatly, "Well. That's very thorough of you." Nicky says, "It's my guess you switched out the stone some time ago, because judging from your husband's response, he knew nothing about it." Cue the nervous laughter, and then: "Mr. Stokes, you're from Texas, aren't you? I can always tell." Nicky says, "I'm a criminalist for Clark County, Nevada." With a roll of the eyes and a set smile, Mrs. Ramsey continues, "One's body may reside elsewhere, but one's body never really leaves home, does it." Nicky gives her a contemptuous look that would stun Warrick. Not knowing when to leave well enough alone, Mrs. Ramsey says confidently, "All you have to say is that you recovered a fake diamond, which is the truth." Nicky replies, "So you can file a false insurance claim, which is a felony? Better yet, why don't I have an adjustor come over to your place to check on the rocks and see which ones are real and which ones you've switched out." Mrs. Ramsey ain't smiling no more. Nicky then breaks out some of his own homespun Texas aphorisms: "If you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is to stop digging. You know what I mean?" Mrs. Ramsey sees, and Nicky lets her stand there while he basks in the glow of a job well done.
Keeping in the spirit of wrapping up plots, Catherine is watching people roll racks of plastic-shrouded clothes past. Gil walks over and quips, "I guess clothes do make the man." Catherine replies, "In this case, The Man makes the clothes. And produces the music. And represents the athletes. When he's not involved in street shootings, of course." Gil looks at the clothes and asks snidely, "And when you asked him what he was wearing the night of the murder, he couldn't remember?" Catherine says resignedly, "As far as he's concerned, murder is just another way to separate himself from the Calvins and Ralphs of the world." Gil looks puzzled; who are the Calvin and Ralph of whom Catherine speaks? Catherine fills in, "Klein and Lauren. Fashion." Gil replies loftily, "For most CSIs, fashion is irrelevant." Coming from a man who makes a habit of studying subcultures, that's an awfully closed-minded thing to say; the fashion world is Exhibit A in extreme minority subculture. Or maybe this out-of-character quip is a shout-out. Do I sound desperate for shout-outs yet? Someone throw me a frickin' bone here. Anyway, Catherine tells Gil that she's not in that "most" category with, "The only thing coming between me and a wardrobe like this is a few extra zeroes in my paycheck." And that daughter to support. Gil asks, "Well, what's standing between you and this Tiny Tim character?" "The Mojave," Catherine says, as odds are good that Tiny Tim is in L.A. Or he's busy playing a corpse courtesy of the Tenth Street Vandals. Catherine and Vega look down on the body and contemplate the cycle of gang violence, and Catherine figures that she's lost her chance to take down The Man.
Two plotlines down, one to go -- as Warrick and Gil enter the lab, Warrick is telling Gil about a case where a boxer put lead shot in his gloves to increase his punching power. He finishes with, "Ancient Greek and Roman pugilists used a glove weighted with metal called a 'cestus.'" Gil says, "You making a classical reference?" Warrick replies, "Yeah. I thought you'd like that." That bonding moment over, Gil raises the question of how Molina got the mercury -- assuming he did put mercury in his gloves -- in the pair of gloves he used. Sara has the answer: he injected it with a 14-gauge needle. This neatly explains the circular pieces of leather found in Molina's locker. Gil muses that since mercury's quite dense, it could easily be contained in a boxing glove. Sara moves things along with, "The question is, would a few ounces of mercury be enough to cause the damage we saw in the victim?" Gil thinks it's time for an experiment.
And then, we see the best scientific experiment ever -- one in which Warrick is stripped down to a wife-beater and preparing to show off his muscles. Now y'all see why I love science, don't you? Warrick laces up and pounds on a punching bag so Sara and Gil can measure the pressure of a punch using the normal gloves. Once he's laced into the lead-loaded gloves, the force Gil's clocking goes off the charts. This is my favorite scene ever! Who needs dialogue?
Cut to Molina quavering before the mountain of evidence the CSIs have amassed -- helped along by a urine test in which the presence of mercury was revealed -- and explaining his actions with, "You push a man too far, there are consequences." Sara's pissed now; she leans forward and says contemptuously, "You knew there was no way you could have beaten Steele in a fair fight." Warrick adds, "The best way to punish a guy is to beat him to death in front of two million people on pay-per-view." Molina gives a cocky, unrepentant grin and says, "That's boxing." Brass corrects him: "No, that's murder. I'll see you in court."
Gil watches this denouement via the fishbowl window, then begins walking down the hall, smiling a little and shaking his head over how easily they got Molina's implicit admission of guilt. As he walks, though, two deputies walk by talking about the fight -- not in context of the person who died, but in anticipation of the title bout six months from now -- and Gil stops in the hall, troubled but not surprised by the people around him.